TA Gaming Stats - April 28th to May 4th 2014

Welcome to the stats for the end of April and beginning of May here on TA. To celebrate one this week's new releases, I've been experimenting with a few of my Ewok helpers, the Statisticles, to try and improve their efficiency by locking them in a room with a genetically modified spider (or 10...thousand). Unfortunately, the results have been less than overwhelming. The only Statisicle to get out of the room not in dried up web cocoon form was Jaramy, who seems to have developed a power of some sort. Well, he's grown six more eyes. On his butt. So I'm not really sure how useful that is.

Games Started32,149 TrueAchievements gamers started a total of 46,193 games between them (1,946 different games).

This week gave us not one but two new releases on both the One and the 360 in the forms of Child of Light (Xbox One) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Xbox One). The latter was supposedly delayed on the One due to wranglings between Activision and Microsoft. However, it popped up on the store on the normal release date, so presumably the issues all got sorted. That, or someone didn't get the memo.

Child of Light proves a popular title on the One, pulling in over 3,000 starters and easily securing first place. Spidey, on the other hand, only manages a measly 500 in third, although those numbers could be attributed to the fact that it's not out on disc yet.

Things are a little flipped on the 360 as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 does (slightly) better than its One version with almost 520 in first place. Cast your eyes down to the Arcade table to see how Child of Light fared...

With no other new releases to kick things up, the rest of the table sees a mix of the more recent big releases and recent "Games with Gold" freebies, all with under 500 starters.

The Arcade table gives us something much bigger to look at. First up, the new "Games with Gold" title proves a popular one as Dust: An Elysian Tail grabs over 7,300 starters, almost three times the next title on the list and 2,000 more than the rest of the table combined. That second title is the previous freebie, Deadlight, with almost 2,500 starters. After the boost it got last week from coming out of Beta, Warface continues to bring in new starters as almost 1,800 put it in third, although that's nearly a drop of 1,000 from last week.

I mentioned earlier that the 360 and One numbers were flipped for new releases this week and here we see how considerable that is. On the 360, Child of Light only manages fewer than 350 starters, around one ninth of the over 3,000 it managed on the One. This was a similar story with Trials Fusion (Xbox One) and Titanfall (Xbox One). So, although more people may still be playing the 360, new games seem to be, on the whole, a lot more popular on the One.

In disappointing news (for me and the Statisticles anyway), a grand total of zero of the many Star Wars related titles that were on sale this week made it onto the table. May the Fourth be with you, my left buttock.

I remain consistently shocked that Dark Souls II is still in first place on games completed. Is this reflective of the more "hardcore" nature of our community or is it just that there aren't many other games that a lot of people are dedicated to completing at the moment?

With so many fewer players on the 360, Child of Light only just pulls in enough completions to make the bottom of the table, mimicking the roughly 10% completion rate of the One version. The easy completion of Deadlight continues to reign, despite dropping from 1,400 to under 850. The boost in players for Dust quickly puts the game up into fourth with almost 100 completions. The completions for Doritos Crash Course 2, which have been boosted following the upcoming server closure announcement, dip slightly this week from 130 in fifth to just over 80 in sixth. Recent easy sales titles Assassin's Creed Liberation HD and Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons take eighth and ninth places with between 40 and 55 completions.

With the biggest completions dropping from 70 to under 35 this week, it's anyone's game at the top of the table. Shark Dash (WP) and Angry Birds Rio (WP) manage to cling to first place with just one completion above Rabbids, which debuts in third. The recent sale titles Jet Set Go (WP), Trivial Pursuit (WP) and RISK (WP) fill up the rest of the table along with the usual easy completions and freebies.

Although Spidey achievements were the most won, no lovely TA'ers were kind enough to update the site with the details for the secret ones, so they remain secret here. What could they be? I'm just going to guess. I'll say the first one is for getting sticky web in your eye and the second one is for eating a fly, then realising that that's one spider-related power that hasn't translated, before sicking it up again. Titanfall stops Spidey getting the clean sweep with spots in third, fourth, seventh and eighth.

The Dust effect gives Action-Adventure a boost, from 6.6 to over 7 million, keeping it securely in first place. Role-Playing makes a jump from fourth the third and 2.7 to 4.4 million thanks to the Child of Light cross-generation double dip. With the Deadlight starters beginning to tail off, Platformer dips by 500,000 to 2.1 million.

Total TrueAchievements won by Genre

Action-Adventure7,049,565

Shooter4,806,131

Role-Playing4,373,544

Platformer2,136,936

Action1,928,604

Sports1,226,171

Racing912,783

Puzzle676,703

Strategy392,914

Adventure321,778

Join us next week when we'll see some Wordament Snap Attack (Win 8) finally give WP and W8 something to talk about, two new 360 releases and the second ID@Xbox release on the One. Yay, new releases!!